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Using FaceTime on your Mac for Conference Calls with Webex, GoToMeeting and GlobalMeethttps://vmwire.com/2017/12/13/using-facetime-on-your-mac-for-conference-calls-with-webex-gotomeeting-and-globalmeet/
https://vmwire.com/2017/12/13/using-facetime-on-your-mac-for-conference-calls-with-webex-gotomeeting-and-globalmeet/#respondWed, 13 Dec 2017 09:03:05 +0000http://vmwire.com/?p=1398Continue reading →]]>If like me you’re generally plugged into your laptop with a headset when working in a nice comfy place and dislike using your cellphone’s speaker and mic or apple headset for calls but instead prefer to take calls on your laptop using the Calls From iPhone feature.

This enables you to easily transition from what you were doing on your laptop – for example, listening to Apple Music, watching YouTube or whatever and flawlessly pick up a call or make a new call directly from your laptop. The benefits here are that you don’t need to take off your headset and continue working without switching devices or changing audio inputs for those with Bluetooth connected headsets.

But have you noticed that the FaceTime interface on OSX has no keypad? This is a problem when you need to pick up a call from the call-back function from Webex for example. Webex asks you to press ‘1’ on the keypad to be connected to the conference. Likewise, if you need to dial into a conference call with Webex, GoToMeeting or Globalmeet, you’ll need to use a keypad to enter the correct input followed generally by ‘#’ to connect. This is a little difficult if there is no keypad right?

If you tried to open up the keypad on your iPhone whilst connected to a call on your Mac, then the audio will transfer from your Mac to your iPhone and you cannot transfer it back.

Luckily there is a workaround. Well two actually, one will enable you to use the call-back functions from conference call systems and the other will enable you to dial into the meeting room directly.

When you receive a call-back call from Webex for example, and are asked to enter ‘1’ to continue, press the Mute button, then use your keyboard’s keys to provide the necessary inputs – press Mute, press 1, press #, then unmute as necessary.

The second workaround involves using direct-dial by just typing/pasting the conference number and attendee access codes directly into FaceTime before making the call. A comma ‘,’ sends a pause to the call, enabling you to enter the attendee access code and any other inputs that you need.

I find that both these work very well for me, mute works for call-back functions and direct-dial works very well when I need to join a call directly. The mute workaround is also very effective when using an IVR phone system too, think banking, customer services systems.

Before we delve too deep in what’s new in USX 3.5, let’s take a brief recap on some of the innovative features from our previous releases.

We delivered USX 2.2 back in February 2015 where we delivered XenServer Support and LDAP authentication, USX 3.0 followed in August 2015 with support for VMware VVOLs, Volume Level Snapshot and Replication and the release of Atlantis Insight. USX 3.1 gave us deduplication aware stretched cluster and also multi-site disaster recovery in October 2015. Two-node clusters were enabled in USX 3.1.2 as well as enhancements to SnapClone for workspace in January 2016.

Some of these features were first in the industry features, for example, support for VMware VVOLs on a hyperconverged platform, all-flash hyperconverged before it became an industry standard and deduplication-aware stretched cluster using the Teleport technology that we pioneered in 2014 and released with USX 2.0.

Figure 1. Consistent Innovation

The feature richness and consistent innovation is something that we strive to continue to deliver with USX 3.5 coupled with additional stability and operationally ready feature set.

Let’s focus on the key focus areas with this latest release and what makes it different from the previous versions. Three main areas with the USX 3.5 enhancements are Simplify, Solidify and Optimize. These areas are targeted to provide a better user experience for both administrators and end users.

Simplify

Health Checks – We’ve added the ability to perform system health checks at any time, this is of course useful when planning for either a new installation or an upgrade of USX. Of course you can also run a health check on your USX environment at any time to make sure that everything is functioning as it should. This great feature helps identify any configuration issues prior to deployment of volumes. The tool will give pass or fail results for each of the test items, however, not all failed items prevent you from continuing your deployment, these will be flagged as a warning. For example, Internet Accessibility is not a requirement for USX, it is used to upload Insight logs or check for USX updates.

Figure 2. Health Checks

Operational Simplicity – enhancing operational simplicity, making things easier to do. On-demand SnapClone has been added to the USX user interface (UI), this enables the ability to create a full SnapClone – essentially a full backup of the contents of an in-memory volume to disk before any maintenance is done on that volume. This helps with maintenance of your environment where you need to quickly take a hypervisor host down for maintenance, the ability to instantly do a SnapClone through the UI makes this an easier method than in previous versions.

Figure 3. On-demand and scheduled SnapClones

Simple Maintenance Mode – We’ve also added the ability to perform maintenance mode for Simple Volumes. Simple Volumes can be located on local storage to present the memory from that hypervisor as a high performance in-memory volume for your virtual machine workloads such as VDI desktops. You can now enable maintenance mode using the Atlantis USX Manager UI or the REST API on simple volumes. What this does is that it will migrate the volume from one host to another, enabling you to put the source host into maintenance mode to perform any maintenance operations. This works with both VMware and Citrix hypervisors.

Figure 4. Simple Maintenance Mode

Solidify

Alerting is an area that has also been improved. We have added new alerts to highlight utilization of the backing disk that a volume uses. Additionally, alerts to highlight snapshot utilization is also now available. Alerts can be easily accessed using the Alerts menu in the GUI and are designed to be non-invasive however due to their nature, highly visible within the Alerts menu in the USX web UI for quick access.

Disaster Recovery for Simple Hybrid Volumes

Although this is now a new feature in USX 3.5, we’ve actually been deploying this in some of our larger customers for a few years now and the automation and workflows are now being exposed into the USX 3.5 UI. This feature enables simple hybrid volumes to be replicated by underlying storage with replication enabled technology, coupled with the automation and workflows, simple hybrid volumes can be recovered at the DR site with volume objects like the export IP addresses and volume identities being changed to suit the environment at the DR site.

Optimize

Plugin Framework is now a key feature to the USX capabilities. It is an additional framework which is integrated into the USX Web UI. It allows for the importing and running of Atlantis and community created plugins written in Python that enhance the functionality of USX. Plugins such as guest VM operations or guest VM query capabilities. These plugins enable guest-side operations such as restart of all VMs within a USX volume, or query the DNS-name of all guest VMs residing in a USX volume.

Figure 5. USX Plugin Framework

I hope you’ll agree that the plugin framework will provide an additional level of capabilities on top of the great capabilities we already have for automation and management such as the USX REST API and USX PowerShell Cmdlets.

Reduced Resource Requirements for volume container memory – we’ve decreased the metadata memory requirements by 40%. In previous versions the amount of memory assigned to metadata was a percentage of the volume export size before data reduction, for example, if you exported a volume of 1TB in size, the amount of memory reserved for metadata would then be 50GB, with USX 3.5 this is now reduced down to just 30GB, whilst still providing the same great performance and data reduction capabilities with fewer memory resources requirements. USX 3.5 optimizations also include the reduction of local flash storage required for the performance tier when using hybrid volumes, we’ve decreased the flash storage requirements by 95%!

In addition to reducing the metadata resource and local flash requirements, we’ve also reduced the amount of storage required for SnapClone space by 50%. This reduction reduces the SnapClone storage footprint on the underlying local or shared storage enabling you to use less storage for running USX.

ROBO to support vSphere Essentials.

ROBO use case is now even more cost effective with USX 3.5. This enhancement enables the use of the VMware vSphere Essentials licensing model for customers who prefer the VMware hypervisor over Citrix XenServer. This is a great option for remote and branch offices with three or less servers that wish to enable high performance, data reduction aware storage for remote sites.

Availability

Atlantis USX 3.5 is available now from the Atlantis Portal. Download now and let me know what you think of the new capabilities.

]]>https://vmwire.com/2016/09/02/atlantis-usx-3-5-whats-new/feed/0vmwire1234567Virtual Volumes – Explained with Carousels, Horses and Unicorns – in pictureshttps://vmwire.com/2014/07/07/virtual-volumes-explained-with-carousels-horses-and-unicorns-in-pictures-2/
https://vmwire.com/2014/07/07/virtual-volumes-explained-with-carousels-horses-and-unicorns-in-pictures-2/#respondMon, 07 Jul 2014 15:14:19 +0000http://vmwire.com/2014/07/07/virtual-volumes-explained-with-carousels-horses-and-unicorns-in-pictures-2/VMwire: [Tongue in cheek. There’s no World Cup on today so I made this. Please don’t take this too seriously.] A SAN is like a carousel It provides capacity (just like a carousel) and performance (when the carousel goes around). People ride on static horses bolted to the carousel and try to enjoy the…]]>

]]>https://vmwire.com/2014/07/07/virtual-volumes-explained-with-carousels-horses-and-unicorns-in-pictures-2/feed/0Featured Image -- 1231vmwireAtlantis USX Data Services with Hyper-Converged Architecture – Web Scale, Virtual Volumes & In-line Deduplicationhttps://vmwire.com/2014/07/02/atlantis-usx-data-services-with-hyper-converged-architecture-web-scale-virtual-volumes-in-line-deduplication-2/
https://vmwire.com/2014/07/02/atlantis-usx-data-services-with-hyper-converged-architecture-web-scale-virtual-volumes-in-line-deduplication-2/#respondWed, 02 Jul 2014 10:43:30 +0000http://vmwire.com/2014/07/02/atlantis-usx-data-services-with-hyper-converged-architecture-web-scale-virtual-volumes-in-line-deduplication-2/VMwire: Atlantis USX has some very cool technology which I’ve had the pleasure to ‘play’ with over the past few weeks. In these series of posts I’ll attempt to cover the various technologies within the Atlantis USX stack. The key technologies in the Atlantis USX In-Memory Data Services are: Inline IO and…]]>

Atlantis USX has some very cool technology which I’ve had the pleasure to ‘play’ with over the past few weeks. In these series of posts I’ll attempt to cover the various technologies within the Atlantis USX stack.

The key technologies in the Atlantis USX In-Memory Data Services are:

Inline IO and Data de-duplication

Content aware IO processing

Compression

Fast Clone

Storage Policies

Thin Provisioning

This post focuses on Inline IO and Data de-duplication (or just dedupe for short) and Fast Clone and how these rich data services enable a hyper converged solution to outperform enterprise storage arrays.

Why would you use Atlantis USX?

The best way to approach this is to look at some use cases: Crazy as it seems, Atlantis USX delivers All-Flash Array performance but also gives five times the capacity of traditional storage arrays. Doing this with 100% software, no hardware appliances, and true software defined storage…

I’ve recently just upgraded from vCSA 5.1 to vCSA 5.5 link and found that Horizon View can no longer complete sysprep customization due to the public key being changed when you upgrade to a new appliance.

Kick off VMware Partner Exchange 2013 at the Welcome Reception. The Weclome Reception is a great opportunity to explore the Solutions Exchange, check out cool products and solutions, and interact with peers, partners and VMware teams. Sponsored by EMC.Signup for #VMwareTweetup, taking place 5:30-7:30 in the Hang Space of the Solutions Exchange (same time as the Welcome Reception) to network with peers and to learn about VMware Link, the new social collaboration platform for VMware Partners! Later, you can also join the #PEXTweetup, an “unofficial” offsite sponsored tweetup for the community.

Join your colleagues at the Partner Appreciation Lounge in the Mandalay Ballroom! The evening will kick off with the club sounds of DJ Mike Attack and a lounge-style buffet, beer and wine. Then later, Third Eye Blind will take the stage with hits like “Jumper”, “Semi-Charmed Life”, and “Graduate”!

]]>https://vmwire.com/2013/02/23/vmwarepex-parties-2/feed/1vmwire2012 in reviewhttps://vmwire.com/2012/12/31/2012-in-review/
https://vmwire.com/2012/12/31/2012-in-review/#respondMon, 31 Dec 2012 11:44:06 +0000http://vmwire.com/?p=973Continue reading →]]>2012 summary of VMwire, not too bad although I did not blog much this year. Will try to do more in 2013. Thanks for visiting.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 250,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 5 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

The VI Toolkit (for Windows) provides a powerful yet simple command line interface for task based management of the VMware Infrastructure platform. Windows Administrators can easily manage and deploy the VMware Infrastructure with a familiar, simple to use command line interface.

The VI Toolkit (for Windows) is a tool that system administrators and developers can use to automate the management of VMware Virtual Infrastructure. With the VI Toolkit (for Windows), many tedious and time-consuming tasks can be completely automated in as little as one line of code.

The VI Toolkit (for Windows) takes advantage of Windows PowerShell and .NET to bring unprecedented ease of management and automation to the Virtual Infrastructure platform. The VI Toolkit (for Windows) provides 125 PowerShell cmdlets that cover all aspects of Virtual Infrastructure management.
Some common tasks that the VI Toolkit (for Windows) can be used to perform include:

Snapshoting all virtual machines.

Disconnecting or removing all Floppy or CD-ROM drives from all Virtual Machines.

Large-scale cloning of templates.

Moving large numbers of Virtual Machines from one virtual switch to another.

Migrating large numbers of Virtual Machines between ESX hosts.

Reports and monitoring across the entire Virtual Infrastructure.

1.2 System Requirements

The following platforms are supported by the VI Toolkit (for Windows):

The following platform combinations are supported by the VI Toolkit (for Windows):

Management of ESX 3.0.2 using Virtual Center 2.5

Management of ESX 3.5 using Virtual Center 2.5

Management of ESXi 3.5 using Virtual Center 2.5

Direct management of ESX 3.0.2

Direct management of ESX 3.5

Direct management of ESXi 3.5

1.4 Pre-requisites

The following tables lists the software pre-requisites and the location to each installer. This guide focuses on the most recent releases as dated 05/02/2009, which are Windows PowerShell V2 CTP3, VI Toolkit (for Windows) version 1.5 and the VI Toolkit Community Extensions build 46896.

Another pre-requisite that is also recommended for general administration is Notepad++. This is used to create and edit scripts that can be run with the VI Toolkit.
Notepad++ can be downloaded from here.2. INSTALLATION

There are three installation tasks that need to be performed before you can start using the VI-Toolkit to manage a VMware Infrastructure.

The procedures below go through in detail how to get the VI-Toolkit up and running after installation. Once installed the icon below will be available on the Windows Desktop.

DO NOT LAUNCH IT YET!

Before launching the VMware VI Toolkit application, you must first set up your PowerShell profile. The new desktop shortcut does two things for you: it starts powershell with the VI Toolkit snapin loaded and it runs a script which modifies the look of the Powershell window and adds some cool extra functions. If you want to have the same functionality in your normal Powershell window and your scripts, you have to copy some stuff to your Powershell profile.
3.1 First, set up your profile:

If the steps were performed successfully, then your profile will be present in the folder structure C:\Documents and Settings\Hugo Phan\My Documents\WindowsPowerShell/ Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

And its contents will look something like this:

3.4 Enabling the execution of scripts

The Set-ExecutionPolicy changes the user preference for the execution policy of the shell. The execution policy is part of the security strategy of Windows PowerShell. It determines whether you can load configuration files (including your Windows PowerShell profile) and run scripts, and it determines which scripts, if any, must be digitally signed before they will run.

You need to set the execution policy to unrestricted using the below cmdlet
set-executionpolicy unrestricted
get-executionpolicy will return the current execution policy.

The default ExecutionPolicy is Restricted. Unrestricted is unnecessarily risky.

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSignedis more secure and works for VI Toolkit 1.5.

3.5 Loading the Community Extensions

The VI Toolkit for Windows Community Extensions is a PowerShell module designed to work with the VI Toolkit for Windows.

1. Download and extract the package and then copy the coreModule folder to the root of C:

2. Open up a Windows PowerShell session and then type in the following commandImport-Module “c:\coreModule\viToolkitExtensions.psm1”

Now you are ready to start using the VI Toolit by either logging into a vCenter environment or by launching scripts.